As the SKWAWKBOX reported last week, Emily Thornberry is said to be moving closer to triggering a contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party after a rousing response to her outstanding performance at PMQs when she stood in for Jeremy Corbyn because Theresa May was absent.

The #Emily4Deputy hashtag first trended on social media in late March, when news of preparations for a challenge first broke, and there is significant support. Even in March, Ms Thornberry was understood to have 35 or 36 nominations by MPs/MEPs lined up – enough to stand if the post was vacant, but short of the fifty or so required to force a contest against an incumbent.

However, the equation has shifted since the General Election and Ms Thornberry is said to be very close to the (now 57) nominations she would need to force a contest whether Mr Watson wants one or…

It’s long been believed by many Corbyn supporters that the right wing of the party wanted Labour to fail badly in the General Election under Jeremy Corbyn – and by almost as many that they were doing their best to make it happen.

How better to explain the constant briefings and whinings to press and broadcasters about unelectability, the manufactured misogyny smear (and worse), the damaging interventions by New Labour dinosaurs no longer in Parliament and the attempts by right-leaning HQ staff to undermine Corbyn and weed out his supporters? Hard to think of a better explanation that fits the facts.

‘The truth will out’, as the saying goes – and former New Labour front-bencher slipped up and let it escape his lips during a television interview.

Asked whether he was disappointed by Labour’s surge in the General Election because it spoiled the chance of getting rid of Corbyn, Johnson…